Thought I’d share a success story.
France’s National Gendarmerie (military police) rolled out GendBuntu, their own custom Linux OS
- Around 35,000 desktops/laptops deployed by December 2011, and today 97% of 103,000+ PCs run GendBuntu
- They started by replacing Office, IE & Outlook in 2005, then moved to Ubuntu in 2008, achieving a 40% reduction in total cost of ownership
- The switch slashed annual license and maintenance costs by millions of euros (~€2 M per year and ~€50 M total) .
The switch away from big Tech to Open Source alternatives might not be easy, but it’s been successfully done before.
“GendBuntu” is an atrocious name, and it doesn’t sound good in French either (perhaps even worse). I don’t know why they insisted on referencing Ubuntu in the name. GendarmOS would have been fine, or GendarmeSE to be more correct.
gendarme from “gens d’armes” to “gens d’ubuntu” (people of ubuntu) which, pronounced quickly would become “gendbuntu” is ok for an os name for gendarmerie
if only they went with arch to call their os “gensdarc” to play with the name Jeanne-d’Arc 🤭